Work package 1: Development and application of procedures for MV isolation

The aims of WP1 are to prepare and distribute MV, to develop protocols to collect, handle, and store biological fluids containing MV, and to isolate MV from such fluids.

The size, concentration, and composition of MV in human blood are disease (state) dependent1, but also depend on pre-analytical conditions2. For example, attempts to standardise pre-analytical variables of blood collection have been unsuccessful so far because of the lack of sufficiently sensitive techniques to detect MV. In WP1, we will study the effects of variation in such pre-analytical conditions on MV.

Schematic of the tasks in WP1. Microvesicles (MV) from single cell types, such as erythrocytes, platelets and cancer-cell, will be isolated. Once these MV are characterized in WP2 and WP3, more complex samples will be prepared, such as a mixture of MV from single cell types and MV from human plasma. The obtained knowledge will be used to develop Standard Operation Procedures (SOPs) for MV isolation from blood and other body fluids, which will be applied to isolate MV from clinical samples.

To tackle this problem, we will systematically investigate vesicles in a step-wise-approach from a single type of vesicle released from a single type of cell, to vesicles of various cellular origin in the most complex biological fluid known, blood.